in the case of fashion, i would definitely say it is the latter. coco chanel once pronounced: “i set the fashion for a quarter of a century. why? because i knew how to express my own time.” since the best fashion always reflects its period, the great designers were mostly shaped and determined by their time and environment. chanel liberated women with jersey, with the little black dress, etc. christian dior gave women the new look. yves saint laurent empowered women with his le smoking tuxedo suit. none would be possible if they did not realize their time and place in fashion with regards to their social period.

what else is essential to become a great fashion designer? creativity? a great point of view? a handsome face? good relationships with the press? yes to all of the above, but the most important is the right business partner – a fashion ceo with a capital f. it is not just any ceos; she/he has to love fashion more than cash. understanding of the long-term nature of identity building and the intangibles of a designers’ brand is a must, while never loses sight of the company’s balance sheet. absent of an ego is imperative to co-exist with designers who egoistic being one of the defining quality. in this business, communication skill has to be second nature: the fceo has to be able to communicate as easily and flawlessly as breathing. she/he is like the king of its world but ultimately serves its queer (correction: queen). it really could be done: pierre bergé to yves saint laurent. barry k. schwartz to calvin klein. domenico de sole to tom ford. robert duffy to marc jacobs.

those are qualities that are not exactly second nature for our chinese people; none of our ancient kings severed their queen. teamwork is fine as long as she/he is the cristiano ronaldo of the real madrid. is it a surprise that none of our national teams consisted of more than 2 people succeeded in the beijing olympics? it is really hard to find good fashion management talents, just like it is hard to find someone to play defenders on our national soccer team. every one wants to score those gorgeous and glamorous goals, but no one is willing to do the dirty work and play the under-appreciated defense.

the irony is: the part that really needs creativity is the business side of fashion. coach turned itself from a manufacturing business to a marketing business offering “affordable” luxury with great timing. zara got creative on their logistics to create amazing value for their customers. h&m practically invented fast fashion. polo paved the way for lifestyle fashion. calvin klein owned the underwear and fragrance business with his ads. duffy once said on twitter: “marc is the dreamer; it’s my job to make it a reality.” he accomplished that creatively, and more. we need more people like that for fashion design to flourish in china.

designers stephan janson, julio espada, christian lacroix and mathew williamson all swung and missed. currently, poor peter dundas is still just looking for the bat. we are talking about a game of pucci.

to many, pucci is a colorful retro-print house. i suspect that such a strong but narrow identity is doing more harm than good. no one dared to move it forward (like nicolas ghesquiere did with balanciaga). no one managed to fake a history onto the company (like tom ford did with gucci). and, no one figured to just take it by the horns and move it the way she/he see fits (like john galliano did with dior). everyone spent a little too much time with pucci’s archive.

there were just too many missed opportunities, with the latest being the inkjet (or digital) fabric printing technology. the british fashion student first started using it for their thesis. with advances of bulk production capacity of the past few years, digital print appeared on runway of hussein chalayan (depicting car crashes), alexander mcqueen (extraordinary textural visual effect, as expected from him), mary katrantzou (bottling up the female body), etc. can you imagine the possibilities of applying this technology to the house of pucci? apparently, none of the passing designers could.

they can’t just keep slapping the pucci prints onto lingerie, cups, hats, etc. to be relevant today, pucci need to show a belief in something. if all pucci stands for are those tired old ‘original’ prints, then they should realize their market really only exists on ebay. pucci, like china, should NOT be paralyzed by its heritage, its history and even its identity (be respectful of the character). turn the page!

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the right: once in a while, people should be a bit selfish and follow their hearts. success sometimes would follow as well

i am probably the last to write about this tom ford directorial debut. and i am the first to admit that i hated all those gucci collections. but i love this movie.

to be expected, it’s a great looking film: the not-overly-slim suits, the semi-transparent house, the wild-within-control mercedes convertible, the slightly-off-beautiful actors. the color story is unexpectedly 3-dimensional; the changes of the color intensity correspond with george’s mood and sensuality. tom ford picked the novel of the same name by christopher isherwood, and did a great job of adopting the screenplay himself, understanding that a great story is essential to his movie much the same way a great inspiration is critical for his fashion shows. the soundtrack is a perfect complement to the visuals, similar to the hair and makeup completing the looks, again, at his fashion shows.

colin firth is amazing. and i love the ‘becoming george’ part. and i love the ending with james ‘coming back’ and kissing george. what a romantic idea (kiss) of death! it’s not just about being homosexual, that would be too narrow a view. it’s more then just beauty, for that is too shallow (that’s what i thought of tom ford before). it’s not very commercial, and that is a shocker! it is about love. it is about life.

i never knew tom ford has such sensuality, this movie puts his old works in totally new contexts. maybe there are other sides of tom ford that we didn’t know about. he did (and financed) this movie for himself and that alone deserves praise. after gucci and before tom ford menswear, someone asked him about a namesake women’s line. he answered that it wouldn’t happen before he direct a movie. with that out of the way, and rumor has it that he is busy building a women’s team, i am looking forwards to it with great expectation.